Love Notes

Change of heart, change of venue

Gabe had no intention of moving back to his hometown. Then he met Kate.

October 12, 2012

"Our first date was me going to Phoenix, and our second date was him moving in. A million things could have gone wrong … and I just appreciate we were really lucky to have found each other," Kate says. They went from that first meeting outside the Cincinnati bar to living together in less than three months.

Gabe soon found a job far more challenging and creative than the one he left in Phoenix. Together they are working to establish a neighborhood art space with workshops for the community in a vacated storefront and restoring their historic house.

Kate and Gabe have always thought it was serendipity or fate that brought them together that night. Actually, it was Andrea. She has never told them that she was matchmaking that night and that they didn't meet just by chance.

"I'm going to make this happen," Andrea told herself as she texted Kate to meet at the bar with Gabe and the others.

Since he moved away from Cincinnati long ago, "It's been an ongoing joke for years that I would find a way to get Gabe back here," Andrea says.

"Our whole thing happened because we were both willing to take a risk," Kate says. "You'll regret it if you don't," says Gabe. "I could be sitting in Phoenix right now. … I would have missed out on the love of my life."